The present invention relates to an apparatus and method of using high-pressure water to effectively wash facilities on an industrial field, such as for example, the walls of tunnels under construction at road sites. The invention makes use of a vehicle-mounted water sprayer capable of discharging pressurized water in a uniform, bar-shaped pattern.
The water sprayer of the invention ejects a bar-shaped water jet formed from uniformly pressurized streams of atomized water. The bar-shaped jet is formed by impinging a high-pressure stream of water with compressed air discharging through the walls of a rectangular nozzle and further impinging said jet with other air flow by means of other instruments mounted on the moving vehicle.
Most conventional nozzles eject either elliptical, circular, or ring-type patterns of liquid depending upon the shape and size of the discharge port of the nozzle. Such an elliptical pattern is shown in FIG. 5. Here, the maximum pressure is located at the center portion thereof and becomes pregressively lower at the peripheral portion of the ellipse, the further one gets from the axis O. The resulting variable pressure gradient is shown in FIG. 7. Such a gradient is present even in those nozzles where the angle of the nozzle port is constructed to be variable. The resulting pressure distribution pattern may be simply represented as a series of isobaric electrical lines which resemble hills in a map (FIG. 8). Such a representation clearly demonstrates that a uniformless pressure is apt to occur particular in the direction of the Y axis of the ejection stream. Such non-uniformity compels the operator to either excessively repeat the movement of the nozzle over the structure being cleaned in order to obtain the desired washing effect, or to use a plurality of nozzles.